It's a royal knockout

Avid readers of Pocket Gamer will be aware that we've had more than our fair share of tower defence titles. The genre is so over-saturated that it's genuinely hard to summon any enthusiasm for new additions.

Thankfully, Royal Revolt! manages to sidestep this problem by offering something relatively fresh and new. Like the brilliant Anomaly games, it's actually the opposite of tower defence - it belongs to the small but growing sub-genre of tower offence.

Instead of securing yourself behind robust castle walls, and building a plethora of defences around your fortress, in Royal Revolt! you assume the role of the besieger.

You're a prince returning home from boarding school to discover that the king, your father, is dead, and his odious siblings have taken over the kingdom. What follows is a righteous campaign to destroy their strongholds and reclaim your birthright.

Succession depression

Using a wide range of units - including burly knights, projectile-chucking archers, and spellcasters - you have to trot around an increasingly chaotic battlefield laying waste to every hostile structure you come across. Your army grows in size and stature the longer you play, and the gold you're awarded at the end of each mission can be used to upgrade the prowess of your troops.

IAPs explained

Gold can be purchased in Royal Revolt! to speed up the upgrade process. 25,000 gold will cost you 79p, while 3,000,000 gold is £34.

While there are a few tricky missions which will tempt you to reach for your wallet, it’s actually quite possible to make your way through the game relying solely on the gold dished out for success in each mission.

Because you're in the shoes of the attacker rather than the defender, Royal Revolt! feels a lot more action-packed and exciting than your typical tower defence title. Instead of throwing up a whole host of towers and waiting for your enemies to fall into your trap, you're constantly healing and respawning troops, or getting stuck in with your own character. There's rarely a dull moment.

Battlefield commander

The frantic gameplay is complemented by some of the best presentation we've seen in quite some time. The developer appears to have been inspired by the brilliant Wii title Little King's Story, and has created a world that is bursting with charm and looks fantastic - although you might find that the HD visuals chug a little on older Android hardware. We tested it on a Nexus 4 and didn't encounter any issues.

Rounded off by a very reasonable IAP system that doesn't beat you over the head with prompts every five seconds, Royal Revolt! ends up being a quite brilliant subversion of the tower defence genre. It's lovely to look at, fun to play, and immensely rewarding - and it doesn't cost a penny.